I am beginning to think of a “digital country,” as the next step along the path from a “social network.” That works, I think.

You might ask; “Well, that last post was interesting, but why didn’t you suggest integrating Rosy into Google chat, rather than Facebook chat?”

The answer is; “I didn’t think about it.” The reason for that answer is that I don’t think of Google as being a digital country. I think of it offering services, primarily search and gmail. I didn’t even think about it being a social network.

But when I did think about it I went over to check out iGoogle, which seemed to be the logical place to start.

Now, in any community (let alone country), people talk to each other and let each know what they are doing or thinking. Those are fundamentals. So to be even considered a digital country those two qualities need to be present.

Now Google has chat and now, after introducing a bunch of “social gadgets” on August 12, has offered its iGoogle users the ability to follow the actions of friends via a timeline. ReadWriteWeb/Frederic Lardinois has a nice summary which, of course, I missed when it first came out.

So we’re set. “igoogle” has cleared the first two hurdles and is off and running as a digital-country-in-the-making. I reach its borders by entering www.igoogle.com, just as the borders of facebook and myspace are at www.facebook.com and www.myspace.com

Now, to attract immigrants (Real World users),  iGoogle has to provide more and better services and products to them than other rival digital-countries-in-the-making.

So those who run iGoogle could integrate Rosy into Google chat and follow the path charted in the last post to offer instantaneous translations in chat (assuming you want to do anything with Rosy independently at all). It’s a “unique and advantageous characteristic” which sets it apart from other potential digital countries.

So sorry, iGoogle and readers, I got it wrong. My bad.

Next step on this topic: a little design-tweaking at iGoogle.